


Scrum

by Chryse



Series: What Did You Think About [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Established Relationship, M/M, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-23 23:52:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4897060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chryse/pseuds/Chryse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rugby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scrum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/gifts).



> This is dedicated to the wonderful and mellifluous aranel_parmadil, who makes everything I write sound so much better, and who has patiently provided me with endless help and advice regarding such diverse matters as sport terms and Welsh surnames. If you've heard her podfics you are nodding in agreement, and if you haven't, you should check them out!

In retrospect, John should have gotten worried when Sherlock stopped talking about it.

 

After a few more unsuccessful attempts at direct interrogation, Sherlock had taken to suddenly tossing out provocative phrases like grenades, in the apparent hope that one of them would jolt John into a reaction. The effect was initially a little starting, but John took it in stride.

“French teacher,” Sherlock said abruptly over a late-night plate of pad Thai. They’d finally tracked down Tafline Jones’ old flatmate, who swore not to have seen Taf since her arrest and wanted them to text her if they had any luck—apparently Taf had stiffed her on the rent.

John, who had just taken a hungry mouthful, choked on a prawn and had to slurp water and be patted on the back by a solicitous waiter before he could respond. “What?’ he managed, eyes watering.

“You heard me.”

John had a moment’s confused recollection of Madame Magee’s round apathetic face and fuzzy perm. “Er…oh wait, yeah! Not the regular teacher. The hot intern! Or exchange teacher or something. Mademoiselle Thibault. Oh yeah, I definitely rubbed out a few thinking about her. Well done, you’ve got it.”

Sherlock sat back and narrowed his eyes.

 

“Harriet’s girlfriend,” Sherlock announced, as John rocked on his heels and stared at the Gutenberg Bible they’d just found in a bedsit in Islington.

“You must be joking. Harry and me never had the same taste. Do you think it’s safe to touch this? Maybe we’d better ring Lestrade and he can get the art squad, or something.”

Sherlock scowled at him.

 

“Left the curtains open,” Sherlock said. “Gave the neighbours across the way a full-on view as you—“

“What?” Lestrade said blankly.

John stood up and pulled off his gloves. “Wouldn’t have done any good, my bedroom looked out over a patch of wood,” he said. “And I had shutters, not curtains. Surprised you missed that.”

Sherlock’s lower lip jutted out mutinously. He turned his back to John and snapped at Lestrade, “It was the husband, obviously. Next time at least _pretend_ to think about a case for five minutes before you call me.”

And he stomped off.

 

“Glad you were okay with staying in,” Lestrade said to John, as they sprawled comfortably on the sofa surrounded by a litter of takeaway boxes. “It’ll be mad out there, we wouldn’t be able to hear the match at all.”

“It might be better if we couldn’t see it either,” John said a little gloomily.

“Yeah, they’re really off, aren't they? What do you think’s wrong? You used to play, right?”

“No, I played rugby.”

“Oh yeah? What posi—“

Sherlock, who had been squirrelled away in the kitchen contentedly mucking about with his chemistry equipment for most of the evening, suddenly popped out like a cuckoo from a clock. “ _Rugby,”_   he breathed, like Isaac Newton discovering gravity.

John and Lestrade stared at him. Sherlock peered at John with his eyes bright with discovery, and then abruptly disappeared.

John and Lestrade looked at each other with their eyebrows raised. John shrugged. “Fancy another beer?”

 

The next morning Sherlock cornered John as he sat down for breakfast and grilled him on his rugby career.

“How long did you play?”

“Were you any good?”

“What position?”

“What is that? What does it do?”

“Did you get injured?”

“Did you injure anyone?”

“Did you get dirty?”

“What did you wear?”

“How short were your shorts?”

Eventually he ran out of questions and simply sat there staring at John with that penetrating gaze that made John feel as though Sherlock could see everything, from the filing in his back molar to his slightly ingrown great toe to his halfhearted consideration of another piece of toast. John gazed mildly back, knowing Sherlock would pounce on any hint of defensiveness or evasion like a terrier. After a while Sherlock nodded in satisfaction, got up, and walked off, saying over his shoulder, “You’ve been cutting your toenails too short again.”

 

“So, are we still on for Saturday? I was going to ring for the reservation,” Harry said brightly on the phone.

“Yep, looking forward to it,” John replied. This was less of a lie than usual. Harry had been off the booze for about three months now, so dinner might actually be fun for a change.

“Is it just us or is Sherlock coming?”

John snorted. “Of course he isn’t.”

“Did you ask him?” Harry found Sherlock much more entertaining than he did her.

John sighed, put the phone down, and said, “Harry’s taking me out for my birthday Saturday, d’you want to come?”

Sherlock looked up from his book. “Your birthday’s not Saturday.”

“No, it’s Tuesday, but it’s harder to get together in the middle of the week because we live so far apart. And she thought I might have plans on my birthday, anyway.”

“Do you?”

“Apparently not. Do you want to come or don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“What?”

“Why wouldn’t I want to come to my partner’s birthday dinner?” Sherlock tried to look wounded and, as usual, failed.

“Riiight,” John said, staring at him. He raised the phone again as Sherlock went back to his book. “Looks like Sherlock’s in.”

“Oh, fantastic, I’ll ring them tomorrow. Eight okay?”

“Lovely,” John said and disconnected. “Listen, I know what you’re up to. It is absolutely _not on_ for you to try to give Harry alcohol to get her to talk about me, do you hear?”

Sherlock looked up again and this time the hurt in his eyes was real, if quickly masked. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Okay, maybe you wouldn’t to Harry,” John conceded.

“I don’t need to, she loves talking about you anyway,” Sherlock pointed out, and went back to his book.

 

Sherlock was right.

“To John!” Sherlock said, beaming as he raised his glass of mineral water. “Many happy returns of this glorious day!”

“Don’t overdo it,” John said between his teeth, thinking that _he_ should have had a few drinks before they left the flat.

Sherlock set down his glass and plopped his chin in his hands, gazing raptly at Harry. “So, Harry, now you have to tell us stories about John as a child. I’ll wager he was quite the little scamp, wasn’t he?”

Harry stared at Sherlock in horror. “Oh God. Is that supposed to be a smile? Does it ever work?”

“Surprisingly often,” Sherlock said, dropping the smile and sitting upright again. “Apologies, I failed to take the Watson perceptiveness into account. Please do tell stories about John as a child though.”

John winced. Surprisingly, however, he found he didn’t mind the stories as much as he’d thought. Maybe it was Sherlock’s evident interest, or the fact that Harry was telling them sober, but even the well-worn chestnut about little John shimmying his way through his mother’s cards party wearing only Harry’s red knickers seemed genuinely funny.

“And they were all putting notes down his bum,” Harry was saying, tears of laughter in her eyes, “and old Mrs. Lockhart said, ‘I’ve only got a tenner-‘”

John thought, with a sudden pang, that there was no one left now who knew these stories but the two of them. Without Harry, how long would his memories of his childhood remain? What would happen if she weren’t there to remind him of the puddings their mother always made on their birthdays?

“No, mine had the custard, it was in the winter. Yours was in the summer, you had the strawberries and whipped cream. Don’t you remember?”

Sherlock was clearly bored with this line of conversation. “But what about John as a teenager?” he asked. “I’m sure he gave your parents no end of trouble.”

“What, John? No, by the time we were teenagers John was the good son. Soldier doctor and all that. _I_ was the troublemaker.”

“You were always the troublemaker,” John said. “It was your idea for me to dance through that cards party in the first place, and then you took half my tips!”

“I was your manager!”

“But he was quite the ladies’ man, wasn’t he?’ Sherlock said, desperately trying to wrench the conversation back on track.

“ _John_?” Harry sputtered, clutching her napkin to her mouth to stifle her laughter. She glanced at John and he realized she was looking for a signal, some indication that he had made himself out to be a juvenile Casanova to Sherlock, so she could keep from blowing his cover. He felt a surge of affection.

“I’ve told him and told him, I didn’t get lucky until university,” John said, spreading his hands. “In school I was the guy all the girls talked to about the _other_ guys. Does he fancy me, does ever he talk about me, what does he see in that cow Kathie Higdon—“

“Kathie Higdon! She’d spread her legs for anyone. She’d have done for me if I’d asked, probably.”

“Well, that’s what everyone saw in her,” John said.

“But you were a rugby player,” Sherlock protested. “All the girls like athletes, don’t they?”

“They like _good_ athletes,” John said.

“Never helped me any,” Harry put in gloomily.

“And you _were_ good—Harry was a star at field hockey,” John said to Sherlock. “I told you, I didn’t get much playing time until the last few years, when I stopped trying to be big and focused on being fast. Even then it wasn’t like the girls were throwing their knickers at me or lining up at the changing room door—“

John stopped, but too late: Sherlock’s eyes had sharpened in that way that meant he’d sighted prey.

“Well, there was that one girl,” Harry said. “Melanie something, she was always hanging around your last year—“

“Melanie Ingram. John lost his virginity to her,” Sherlock said helpfully.

Harry had to bury her face in her napkin again, giggling so hard she turned bright red, and fortunately at that moment a parade of waiters arrived bearing a birthday cake and singing “Happy Birthday” with credible enthusiasm.

 

And then he just stopped. No more quizzing, no more hints, just nothing. John spent a few days holding his breath, and when nothing happened, he began to wonder if Sherlock had deliberately decided to hold off. Maybe he’d realized he didn’t want to solve this last mystery, to be left with a John who was just as much of a boring open book as everyone else. Maybe.

Sherlock also seemed to have given up searching for the vanished Tafline Jones, although when John asked him he said cryptically that he hadn’t stopped looking, he was just looking elsewhere. What this meant John had no idea, as Sherlock certainly showed no signs of going anyplace.

 

“Look at this,” Sherlock said, shoving his laptop at John.

“Rash of burglaries in Woking,” John read. “Hey, I used to live near Woking.”

“You lived in Chertsey.”

“Well, yeah, Chertsey’s only a few miles from Woking.”

“Is it?” Sherlock cocked his head. “Maybe you’ll see someone you know then.”

John skimmed the article. All the owners had been out of town when their houses were robbed, and none of those with alarms had gone off. Only small items such as jewelry and cash had been taken. As crimes went, this was one of the most boring John could imagine.

“Look at the picture,” Sherlock said, leaning over and poking at the screen.

The picture showed a tearful woman standing in front of an empty jewelry box and clutching a large beagle in her arms. The beagle looked as though it very much wanted to be someplace else.  Dog? Teary woman? Jewelry box? John couldn’t make out anything else in the picture. He scanned the article again and found mention of another dog: “I only wish our Ripper’d been here to tear the seats out of their trousers, he’d have given them what for.”

“The dogs?” John said hopefully. “Is this like the Silver Blaze thing, the dogs not barking in the nighttime?”

“Because the dogs weren’t at home in the nighttime,” Sherlock said. He flashed a quick ferocious smile. “Brilliant, John, you’re ahead of the Woking police already. Pack a bag. This might take a few days.”

 

John rang Lestrade and Lestrade rang the Surrey police, so the Detective Inspector in Woking—a slim, dark-skinned man named Kincaid—was happy to meet with them when they arrived. Within minutes Sherlock had established that all of the victims owned medium to large sized dogs.

“But none of the dogs were home.” Sherlock steepled his fingers and fixed his beadiest stare on Kincaid. “Where were they?”

“Er.” Kincaid looked at his DS for help, who spread his hands. “Some might have gone along on holiday, I suppose, or…”

“Some certainly, but at least two were abroad, and we know they didn’t have minders as no one was at the houses, so logically they were most likely to be boarded, weren’t they?” Sherlock opened his own laptop and brought up a map. “Here are the homes of the victims, here, here, here, all located in this area, roughly, so logically they are most likely to have boarded their dogs at the largest and most popular kennel in that area, _here,_ don’t you think?”

“Definitely,” Kincaid said, looking relieved to be handed so obvious a cue. “I’ll just ring—“

“Absolutely not.” Sherlock actually jerked the phone out of his hand. “You’ll give the whole thing away. John and I will go round and check it out.”

 

Birch Farm Kennels was lovely. They got a personal tour from the owner herself, a cheery older woman with a quivering ball of fluff tucked in one arm. Sherlock cranked the drama queen up to eleven and insisted on inspecting every square inch. John trailed along, nodding politely whenever a comment was directed his way and trying not to snigger, and eventually Sherlock declared himself satisfied and booked a stay for his standard poodle Mycroft for the following weekend.

“What did you think?” Sherlock asked as they buckled themselves back into the hire car.

“Seemed nice enough,” John said shrugging. “I’d leave a dog there if we really had one.”

“Not about the kennels, the boy in the exercise yards,” Sherlock said with thinly veiled exasperation.

“Oh, him.” John had only a vague recollection of the young man leading the dogs out to a grassy field. He had struck John as a gentle soul, milky blue eyes and a tangle of fair hair. “He didn’t seem like a thief.”

“Who said he was the thief?” Sherlock leaned forward and peered at a very old car that seemed more rust than vehicle. “That’s clearly his car, the owner has the Land Rover and the girl at the desk takes the bus. Hmm.” He put the car in gear and drove off a little way down the road, pulling over when they were out of sight so he could phone Kincaid. “Don’t give your name, ask for Susan Mackinnon, that’s the owner. Right. _Only_ talk to the owner, and make sure she’s alone. Yes. Ring me back when you’ve got the information.” He rang off and sighed. “Makes me appreciate Lestrade. Don’t tell him I said that.”

“Course not,” John said, already texting. “Where to now?”

“Find a hotel,” Sherlock said, pulling back onto the road. “We’ve some time to kill, and I imagine you’ll want to eat, as usual.”

 

Much later that night, John stood peering out a window in a small, tidy garden shed. He was bored and his feet were beginning to hurt. “You sure we’ve got the right house? It’s after midnight.”

“Of course it’s the right house.” Sherlock was keeping watch out his own window, as bright-eyed and alert as when they had taken up their positions an hour ago. “I told you, all the burglaries took place on Tuesdays or Fridays, which are Alfie Jameson’s nights to sleep at the kennels. Tonight is Tuesday—well, it _was_ Tuesday—and the owner’s dog only came into the kennels yesterday and will be picked up Friday. This is the only night and it’s an excellent location, very secluded. They won’t be able to—“ he broke off abruptly, holding a hand out to silence John. John turned back to his own window and a second later heard what Sherlock’s far keener ears had already picked up: the slow sputter of a motor, the type of sound made by a very old, very rusty car being driven very slowly.

John held his breath, staring into the dark garden. The motor noise stopped and for a few minutes there was only silence. Then Sherlock stiffened behind him and held out his hand again, this time to beckon John closer. John slipped silently to his side and looked out. At first he could see nothing, but then he made out a small dark figure straightening from where it had evidently just crawled under the hedge. The dark figure took a few steps forward and paused, looking around the garden, and John and Sherlock ducked back against the wall. They exchanged a glance and, after another few seconds, crowded back into the window.

The figure in the garden was so small that John’s first thought was that it was a child, but then it pulled out a mobile and the screen illuminated her face as she began a text. John’s mouth opened in a soundless gasp and Sherlock promptly clapped a hand over it. Tafline Jones slipped the mobile back into the pocket of her hoody and moved silently toward the back door. When she reached it she knelt down, pushed back her hood, and unzipped her hoody a few inches. John shoved Sherlock’s hand away and watched, puzzled, as she cocked her head, reached out to push something, and then proceeded to wriggle her way through a small opening in the door.

John smacked his forehead with his hand. “The dog door!” he hissed. “That bloody little pixie, she went through the dog door!”

“The electronic dog door,” Sherlock corrected in a whisper. He already had his own phone out and was busily texting. “Unlocked by an electronic key on the dog collar. Alfie takes the collar and gives it to Taf, she robs the house, and he has the collar back on the dog before morning. No one even knows he was gone. Obviously Alfie wasn’t going through the dog doors, he’s far too big.” Sherlock sighed in exasperation at whatever Kincaid had just texted back in return and reached into his pocket. “Go get Alfie and keep him quiet,” he said, handing John a pair of handcuffs and one of Lestrade’s warrant cards. “You brought the duct tape, yes?”

Getting Alfie was ridiculously easy.  All John had to do was flash the warrant card and he was blubbering like a baby, holding his hands out meekly for the handcuffs and apologizing profusely. “I knew it weren’t right,” he said miserably to John as he was marched briskly back round the house, “but I just couldn’t say no to her. Blokes like me never get a chance with someone like that, do they?”

_Only as long as they’re getting what they want from you,_ said the snotty Donovan voice in John’s brain, but he pushed it resolutely away. “I’m going to have to tape your mouth now so you won’t give us away,” he said, but his touch was gentle and he was careful with the duct tape.  He hauled Alfie back into the garden and parked him with his hands handcuffed around a tree, then joined Sherlock where he was crouching by the dog door.

He did not have to wait long. A few minutes after he knelt down—Sherlock throwing Alfie only the most cursory of glances—there came a rattle from the dog door, and then a small hand appeared, pushing through a pillowcase stuffed with what sounded like jewelry. The hand pushed the pillowcase to the side and withdrew. A minute later Taf’s head and shoulders slithered through, then she worked her arms free, and then began wriggling to try and free her hips.

“Would you like a hand?” Sherlock inquired solicitously.

Taf jumped, swore as she bumped her back, swore again, braced her elbows on the ground, and looked up. “Ah fuck, not you again.”

“Lovely to see you too. Gained a few pounds in the hips, have we?”

Taf would have been back through the door like a shot, but John had already grabbed one arm, and between them he and Sherlock had soon dragged her the rest of the way through, thrashing and struggling and trying to hook her feet into the door. When she was finally out on the ground Sherlock sat on her. “Wrap her up,” he said brightly to John.

“Get off me, you bloody tosser, you weigh a fucking ton,” Taf shouted, face muffled by the grass.

“That’s a new one,” John said, struggling to pin Taf’s legs long enough to bind them in duct tape. By the time he was finished she looked like a very small and furious mummy.

Kincaid was dubious when he arrived. “I don’t know as I can take her to the station like that,” he said. “Might look like police brutality.”

“I’d take her like that or you won’t have to worry about what it looks like, because she won’t be in the car when you get there,” John told him.

“Not even going to buy me dinner this time?” Taf said to Sherlock. She seemed genuinely affronted.

“Afraid not, but it’s been a pleasure, truly,” Sherlock said, shaking both her tiny bound hands in his large one. “I look forward to our next encounter. Not you, Kincaid. You won’t be needing us now, Alfie will tell you everything you need to know. John?”

 

John thought the likelihood of finding anyplace open where Sherlock would deign to eat was low, but he kept an optimistic eye out nonetheless, and so noticed when they turned the wrong way. “Aren’t we going back to the hotel?”

“Eventually.”

John looked out the window to hide his smile. He had no idea what Sherlock was up to, but it didn’t matter; John would follow along regardless. He spotted the familiar landmarks when they passed through Chertsey, but the area had built up quite a bit since the last time he had been there, and he didn’t recognize the dark side road Sherlock turned down until they turned again, headlights flashing across a familiar logo.

“Hey, that’s—“ John clamped his teeth together. Of course Sherlock knew this was John’s old school. Which meant he knew everything, and probably had for a long while.

Sherlock pulled into the car park of the rugby pitch and parked at the far edge, where the car would be hidden in the shadows, and got out. John followed him. He thought he should have felt disappointed, or maybe apprehensive, but strangely he didn’t.  The crisp cool of the night air, the familiar dark shape of the buildings against the night sky, made him feel lit up and alive in a way he recalled from adolescence, from Afghanistan. The way Sherlock still made him feel. If this was their last hurrah, then he was going to go out enjoying himself.

“Worked it out then,” John said conversationally, falling in next to Sherlock as he turned toward the low huddle of the building next to the pitch.

“Yep,” Sherlock said, setting off. “All but a few minor points. On the…” he flapped his hand toward the pitch. “…grass, or in the changing room?”

“Changing room.”

“After the match?”

“No, after the first half.”

“Ah,” Sherlock breathed in pleased surprise. “Of course.” They reached the door and he handed John a torch, reaching in his pocket for his lockpicks. John leaned against the wall, keeping the torch steady on the lock, letting the half-forgotten scent of grass and sweat stir the adrenaline humming in his nerve endings: _alive, alive, alive._

“Got it,” Sherlock said, getting to his feet and holding out a hand for the torch. John followed him in and looked around, the room exactly as he remembered in the dim illumination of the emergency exit lights and Sherlock’s torch. John couldn’t help smiling. It seemed a lifetime since he’d been here, the memories blurred into a nostalgic haze of pain, triumph, despair, and, of course, lust.

“So, the first half has just ended,” Sherlock said. He shone the torch around the walls, turning in a slow circle to take in lockers, shelves, benches, hooks. “The score is tied. You’re facing your arch-rival, of course, and everything is riding on this match.” He glanced at John with his eyebrows raised and John gave him a single nod: close enough, keep going.  Sherlock set the torch on its base on a bench so it shone up at the ceiling and began to unbutton his coat. “There was an opportunity to score at the end of the half but your team bungled it. You’re angry. Frustrated. _Tense.”_ He hung the coat on a hook and began on his jacket. “Your players are worried. You’re the star player, they need you at your best.” He hung the jacket next to his coat and turned back to John, demeanor shifting: a brave lieutenant speaking truth to power. “You’ve got to do something so you can settle down,” he said. “Blow off some steam. Get focused.”

John swallowed around his dry throat. “What do you suggest?”

Sherlock’s unblinking dark gaze held his. “One of those girls hanging around the door should do. They’re all screaming your name.”

“Are they.” John swallowed again, lifted his chin a notch. “All right. Go on then.”

Sherlock turned away, the narrator once more. “They send a player. He brings back a girl.” He toed off one shoe and then the other, pushing them out of the way under the bench with his foot. “She’s excited. John Watson is her hero, he’s everyone’s hero, the star of the team, the _wunderkind_ , the Mozart of rugby.” He thumbed open the button of his trousers. “She’d do anything for you.” He pushed the trousers down his hips, struggling a little, still watching John. “Anything at all. When the player tells her he’s been sent to bring back the prettiest girl out there she’s thrilled, because nothing would make her happier than to service John Watson, to let John Watson have her against the wall.” He stepped out of the trousers and turned his back.

John stared. He was not looking at black socks and an expanse of pale leg. Sherlock was wearing dark tights under a skirt, the same box-pleated uniform skirt with gold piping that the girls had worn when John was in school, the skirt that had figured so prominently in his adolescent fantasies. It was considerably shorter on Sherlock.

“Jesus Christ,” John said. In the dim light the illusion was almost perfect: white blouse, dark blue skirt, tights. With his head bent even Sherlock’s curls looked as though they could be that Andie MacDowell-style permed bob many of the girls had favored—not that many of the girls at John’s school had been six feet tall. If John had spent much time on the visuals, his fantasy would have looked exactly like this. He stepped up behind Sherlock, resting his hands on his hips. “Have you been wearing this all day?”

“Just since the hotel. The skirt’s a bit bulky.”

“You’re amazing.” John felt vaguely that he should feel ashamed at Sherlock working this out—he _had_ been ashamed, remembering how he’d fantasized about using a girl like this, getting off in front of everyone—but really he felt incredibly aroused, and touched that Sherlock had gone to so much trouble. _He’s just a perfectionist,_ the voice in his head whispered. John ignored it. He slid his arms around Sherlock’s waist and nuzzled the back of his neck. Sherlock did not smell like Sherlock. He smelled…floral, and a little like strawberries, and the skin of his jaw and neck was shaved close and smooth. John had assumed Sherlock was showering at the hotel because he was persnickety about the dog smell, but really he had been turning himself into a fantasy sixteen-year-old girl in a suit.

John tightened his grip around Sherlock’s waist and dragged his lips up the back of Sherlock’s sensitive neck, teasing his ear with his tongue. “What if I wanted a boy?” he murmured into his ear. “Maybe I wanted one of the younger boys on the team, thought about him sucking me off.”

Sherlock shifted, spreading his legs wider to align their hips. He had picked a spot with a shelf where he could brace his forearms but it was cluttered with all manner of junk, and now he shoved it out of his way. An old deodorant clattered to the floor and rolled away into the dark. “Oh, you did. But only in secret. In that fantasy you were in the equipment cupboard, fast and dirty where no one could see.  _This_ one is all about the exhibitionism, about your teammates seeing a pretty girl spread her legs for you, watching you take her so hard she forgets her own name.”

Of course he was right. John reached to tangle one hand in his hair, pulling Sherlock’s head around to draw him into a bruising kiss. “None of them were as pretty as you,” he said and Sherlock shivered as John’s mouth claimed his. It was true. John was not trying to pretend Sherlock was really a girl—he was too big and too angular—but the sweet-smelling smoothness of him was undeniably arousing, and the feel of that rough wool skirt pressed against him was lighting a primal fire in John’s gut. He’d envisioned this so often in his younger days he could almost feel the griminess of his sweat-soaked shirt, hear the feral excitement of the other players as they crowded round. In his imagination the girl had been only a faceless blur in a school uniform, moaning his name as he’d pushed her against the wall and shoved in, but Sherlock was real and slender and warm in his arms. He sucked Sherlock’s lower lip between his teeth and bit gently, then mouthed his way down his neck—not sucking hard enough to bruise, but just hard enough to hint at it. John was fully hard now, and when Sherlock began rolling his hips to grind back into his groin John broke off and stepped back.

“I’m going to take you right here,” he whispered into Sherlock’s mouth. “Up against the wall, just as you said.”

He felt the curve of Sherlock’s smile against his cheek. “I know.”

“Better hold on then.” John stepped back a little and dropped his hands to Sherlock’s legs, sliding them underneath the hem of the skirt and up the long silky length of his thighs. The fabric of the tights was satiny-slick under his fingers. John reached around as far as he could, running his hands up the insides of Sherlock’s thighs, and Sherlock sucked in air and spread his legs wider. The tights felt smooth as glass under John’s fingers and he could feel the ripple of Sherlock’s muscles underneath. These tights were a big improvement over the ones Sherlock had worn in his dancer-fantasy phase, John thought: he had a momentary urge to just rub his cock against the slick fabric until he came all over Sherlock’s arse.  What would Sherlock’s arse feel like under this? John slid his hands back and up, seeking that lush silky backside, and suddenly his thumbs met hot skin.

“Huh,” John said half-aloud, questioningly, and Sherlock dropped his head onto his arms, laughing under his breath.  John’s palms were on soft flesh, but his fingertips were on Lycra, and when he reached up he felt the taut elastic of the waistband.

“Backless tights,” Sherlock said, voice shaking with suppressed laughter. “A bit hard to find in my size, especially not in fishnet, but I thought it would help to maintain the illusion.”

“Not really in the dress code,” John said. He squeezed two generous handfuls of arse, rolling and spreading, and Sherlock shuddered. John moved lower and then stopped: his hand had brushed something hard. He palmed it experimentally and Sherlock jerked and gasped. John cocked his head, curious, and ran his fingers over it: a hard circle, glassy-smooth, right over Sherlock’s— oh _Christ._ He’d never seen one, but he knew what it was. “You’ve had this in all night?"

Sherlock shuddered again as John pressed his palm into the plug. “I thought—it would rather derail the fantasy—if you had to—“ He sounded somewhat strangled.

“Bloody genius,” John said and caught his head again, the kiss hard and possessive this time: tongue down his throat, one hand squeezing Sherlock’s arse hard enough to hurt, hand gripped in his hair. Sherlock moaned around John’s tongue and tried to push back against his hand. John held him tightly, seized by a burning want almost unnerving in its intensity: less lust than pure animal possessiveness, a desire to mark and claim and own.

Sherlock gasped for breath under him and John eased off on his grip, kissing him one last time with far more gentleness. He pressed his palm into the plug as he had before, relishing the shudder that rippled up Sherlock’s spine, and moved it in an experimental circle, making Sherlock twitch and moan. “Feel good?” he murmured, pressing again, and Sherlock’s head thudded against his shoulder.  John nipped at his ear, stepped back, and pushed up the skirt. The pale circle of Sherlock’s arse seemed to glow suspended in the darkness like a literal moon.

“Let’s get this out of the way,” John said, taking hold of the plug. Sherlock fumbled in his breast pocket as John eased out the plug—it helped to twist a little, he found--and handed back a small packet.

“There’s about a litre of lube up there, but just in case.”

“Thanks,” John said, taking it as he unzipped his trousers. He slicked himself up and gripped Sherlock’s hip with one hand whilst he lined himself up with the other and then hesitated, the long-held habit of caution warring with his desire to just sink into that stretched wet opening.

Sherlock looked back at him over his shoulder. “You’d best get on with it. All your teammates are watching, you don’t want them to think you haven’t the nerve, do you? And there’s probably not much time left in the break and the coach—“

John pushed in, not trying to be slow or gentle but plunging in a single long thrust until he was buried as deeply as he could go. Jesus, Sherlock felt good, stretched open and slippery and yielding under him. John pulled out almost all the way and teased him for a bit, rocking just the head of his cock in and out in a quick shallow motion that soon had Sherlock panting and shoving back against him. “You haven’t got long, remember,” Sherlock managed, bucking back in a fruitless effort to get more of John inside him.

“Shh,” John said. He loosened his grip, letting Sherlock fall back into him, and Sherlock yelped as he took John’s full length. John wrapped his arm around Sherlock’s waist and clapped a hand over his mouth. “ _Shh._ The coach will hear you. You can’t make a sound, do you understand?”

Sherlock nodded against his hand.

“Good,” John growled. He let go and took hold of Sherlock’s hips again. “Then hold still and keep your mouth shut, because I’m about to fuck your brains out.”

And he did.

Like so many things, fucking Sherlock up against a wall turned out to be far less fun than John had imagined. Sherlock’s stocking feet slipped and slid on the concrete floor and the damned skirt kept falling back down no matter how high John shoved it up his back. Finally Sherlock gasped, “Wait,” and hauled one leg up to wedge his foot onto an equipment locker, bracing his other foot against John’s, and John took advantage of the pause to loop the hem of the skirt up and stuff it into the waistband. They got on rather better after that.  John closed his eyes, conjuring the scene he’d pictured so many times in his youth: the hungry eyes of the other players, the smell of old socks and sweat, the building pressure in his groin.

Sherlock was grunting with every thrust and his breathing had gone hard and sharp-edged, but John knew he couldn’t come like this: the angle was wrong, and he couldn’t let go to get a hand down. John gave a particularly hard thrust, burying himself to the hilt, and then wrapped one arm around Sherlock’s waist to hold him in place whilst he reached around with the other. He didn’t have much of a plan in mind, but when his hand connected with the hard bulge in Sherlock’s tights Sherlock flung his head back and moaned, so John cupped his hand around the long line of his cock and began stroking. The tights were an extremely efficient conductor of friction. In a few moments John’s palm was hot and tingling and Sherlock was breathing in high-pitched little pants, rocking back and forth on John’s cock, and John was just wondering whether Sherlock could actually orgasm this way or if he should try to work his hand into the tights when Sherlock abruptly bucked forward, burying his teeth in his own sleeve. John felt the wet warmth spread under his palm as Sherlock convulsed again, thrusting into John’s hand over and over as he whimpered into his arm. It should not have been so hot for Sherlock to come in his tights with John deep inside him, but somehow it was—John could barely hold himself back until Sherlock had finished.

When the quaking subsided John pulled his hand away, wiped it off on the skirt—surely they would be binning that thing—and gripped Sherlock’s hips again. Sherlock, who had apparently got his breath back, lifted his head. “They’re crowding in closer now,” he told John. “They saw you make me come and it’s made them want it; they’re hard in their shorts. They want a turn. They’re pressing in now and they’ve quite forgotten the match, you can feel their breath on your—“

“Fuck off,” John growled to his imaginary audience. “You lot will have your fun after the match, _if_ you win. But I get this one. I’m going to stick that plug back in when I’ve finished and when the match is done I’m coming right back here and having you again—“

“Yes,” Sherlock gasped, arching his back. John pulled back, slammed in; Sherlock’s knuckles went white where they clenched the shelf. John groaned, gripping Sherlock’s hips as he thrust into him, building up a pounding rhythm, fingers digging into the silky fabric of the tights. “On that bench, I’ll be waiting, you’ll go first but they’ll all be lining up, they’re _drooling_ for it.”

John could see it: Sherlock’s legs spread wide, all stretched out and fucked open and filled with John’s come, just waiting for John to fill him again. He realized with a small shock of surprise that he had not been thinking about that fictitious girl at all. It was Sherlock he wanted, Sherlock he wanted his teammates to see him fucking and claiming: Sherlock with his long legs and white neck and piercing eyes. The most brilliant, beautiful man John had ever known.

John bit down on his lower lip and pulled back a bit, fucking Sherlock fast and shallow as he had at first, feeling the hot pleasure coiling. His toes curled in his shoes. He was getting close. He slowed down and adjusted his grip and then Sherlock shoved back, and John shouted, dragging Sherlock flush against his groin as he plunged in, and then back and in again as he pulsed, so hard he half expected to see come spraying out Sherlock’s ears. He staggered half a step, knocking into the bench and sending the torch rolling off into the dark, the beam making a crazed strobe as it went.

“Fuck,” John panted. He blinked. Sherlock was a dark blur in front of him; the torch had ended up across the room with its beam pointing at the opposite wall. John straightened and pulled out, groaning, and then steadied Sherlock with an arm around his waist as Sherlock pulled his leg down and got himself upright. John caught his face—nearly putting his thumb in Sherlock’s eye—and kissed him, rather sloppily, as it was dark and he was still gasping for breath. Sherlock stumbled a little as he returned the kiss.

John wiped himself off with his handkerchief—awkwardly, since he couldn’t see—and then set off in search of the torch.

“Do you think Mrs. Hudson would wash these?” Sherlock asked. John swung the torch around. Sherlock had got rid of the skirt and was now trying to wriggle out of the tights, no easy task.

“No, but you could probably just rinse them in the basin,” John said, grinning.

“I wouldn’t mind wearing them again. The butt plug too. It was rather titillating.”

John shone the beam around until he located the butt plug. “I’d be up for that. Don’t hold onto the skirt on my account though.”

“Oh God no, that’s gone in the bin.”

That should make for an interesting find for the cleaners. The butt plug--having been coated in lube, shoved up Sherlock’s arse, and then rolled across a boys’ changing room floor--was in no very pristine condition, so John wrapped it in his soiled handkerchief and stuck it in Sherlock’s coat pocket.

“I should have thought to bring pants,” Sherlock muttered behind him. “No, actually, I should have thought to bring _socks._ Do you think anything will be open? I’m starving.”

“There was a vending machine back at the hotel,” John said. In contrast to Sherlock, who sounded annoyingly alert, John felt suddenly exhausted. It was very late, and that was the most vigorous sex he’d had in ages—the backs of his thighs were already aching. And then, of course, there was that creeping dull grey fear at the edges of his mind, the worry that now that Sherlock had uncovered this last secret…but no, he’d said he wanted to wear the tights again, hadn’t he? Maybe he hadn’t lost interest quite yet. “Take the M25. Maybe we’ll see something.  At this point it’s so late it’s practically early, so we might find someplace open for breakfast.” He yawned, jaw cracking.

“This,” Sherlock said, standing up from where he had been tying his shoes with unnerving accuracy in the dark and stomping over to John, “is highly uncomfortable. But I could bear it a bit longer for a fry-up and coffee.”

John couldn’t help smiling at him. “Hold still.” He trained the torch on Sherlock with his right hand and used his left to finger-comb Sherlock’s crazed bird’s nest of hair into something resembling its usual style. It did not really help. Sherlock was a mess: hair wild, lips swollen, shirt crumpled, bare ankles pale under his trousers. He looked exactly as though he’d just been shagged against a wall, and John thought he’d never seen anything more lovely. “There. Beautiful .”

For just an instant John glimpsed a strange expression in Sherlock’s eyes, something surprised and soft-edged and vulnerable. But it must have been just a trick of the torchlight. Sherlock shrugged into his coat with offhand elegance and swirled toward the door, saying, “Ready?” over his shoulder with his usual nonchalance.

“Yep,” John said. He shone the torch around the changing room for one last look, and then he followed Sherlock out the door.

 

**Author's Note:**

> John apologizes again for this fantasy, which he knows was both exploitative and unrealistic. Given half a chance, girls aren't lining up at the boy's changing room--they're at their own changing room, getting ready for their own match. This may be the unlikeliest place imaginable to plug girls' sports, but there is extensive evidence that participation improves girls' lives by every measurable outcome. So support your local field hockey, basketball, softball, netball, volleyball, rugby, football, golf or tennis team! And all you little Harrys: go out there and kick some ass.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Scrum](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4930840) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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